Artificial Intelligence at Human Level by 2029?

Gerard Boyers writes "Some members of the US National Academy of Engineering have predicted that Artificial Intelligence will reach the level of humans in around 20 years. Ray Kurzweil leads the charge: 'We will have both the hardware and the software to achieve human level artificial intelligence with the broad suppleness of human intelligence including our emotional intelligence by 2029. We're already a human machine civilization, we use our technology to expand our physical and mental horizons and this will be a further extension of that. We'll have intelligent nanobots go into our brains through the capillaries and interact directly with our biological neurons.' Mr Kurzweil is one of 18 influential thinkers, and a gentleman we've discussed previously. He was chosen to identify the great technological challenges facing humanity in the 21st century by the US National Academy of Engineering. The experts include Google founder Larry Page and genome pioneer Dr Craig Venter."

Oblig.

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one welcome our broadly supple, emotionally intelligent overlords.

This is good news and bad news...

[zappepcs]

Good news: This could herald a lot of good stuff, increased unemployment, greater reliance on computers, newer divides in the class strata of society, further confusion on what authority is and who controls it, as well as greater largess in the well meaning 'we are here to help' phrase department.

Bad news: After reviewing the latest in the US political scene, getting machines smarter than humans isn't going to take so much as we thought. My toaster almost qualifies now. 'You have to be smarter than the door' insults are no longer funny. Geeks will no longer be lonely. Women will have an entire new group of things to compete with. If you think math is hard now, wait till your microwave tells you that you paid too much for groceries or that you really aren't saving money in a 2 for 1 sale of things you don't need. Married men will now be third smartest things in their own homes, but will never need a doctor (bad news for doctors) since when a man opens his mouth at home to say anything there will now be a wife AND a toaster to tell him what is wrong with him.

oh god, this list goes on and on.

AI may not get that far

[httpcolonslashslash]

As soon as they make robots that can have sex like humans...what's the point in inventing anything else? All scientists will be busy "researching" their robots.

Whatever Could They Mean?

[flyneye]

" Artificial Intelligence will reach the level of humans"
Buddy,I've been around more than four decades.I've yet to see more than a superficial level of intelligence in humans.
Send your coders back to the drawing board with a loftier goal.

Luckily for all of us Kurzweil is Stone Cold Crazy

[liquiddark]

If you read a Kurzweil book, it's as if he understands hope and has no concept of problems. The man is so good at glossing over difficulties he should patent his methods and join the magazine industry.

You've underestimate Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

In 25 years, the iAI that autonomously walks (with a strut) will be introduced by Apple. It will not play chess, however it will play checkers, and the board will be setup perfectly.

Re:Hrmmmm

[timeOday]

Please do not take this personally, but I don't think neuroscience is particularly important to AI. Yes, biology is horribly complex. But airplanes surpassed birds long ago, even though airplanes are much simpler and not particularly bio-inspired. Granted, birds still surpass airplanes in a few important ways (they forage for energy, procreate, and are self-healing... far beyond what we can fabricate in those respects) but airplanes sure are useful anyways. I don't think human-identical AI would have much use anyways, since it would have the same neuroses and demand all the same rights that make humans such a pain to work with.

Re:Well I'm not holding my breath

[Anonymous Coward]

Things never got any better than Eliza.

Dude, that was 40 years ago. You need to talk to someone to help you get over her.

Re:Hrmmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Your so full of shit. Anyone with anything going doesn't post at Slashdot.

That is totally going to

[Lewrker]

spoil 2029 - the year of the linux for the desktop.

Re:Oblig.

[Anonymous Coward]

While you're at it, welcome the flying car and Duke Nukem Forever.

Re:Hrmmmm

[Daffy Duck]

Maybe that's what Kurzweil is getting at: by the year 2029, AI will have achieved human-level abilities to make grossly inaccurate predictions of the future of AI.

Re:Oblig.

[Anonymous Coward]

well as a programmer for 2 years and someone who just knows what he's talking about, computers and human brains will not be equal anytime remotely soon. They work in the most basic way completely differently from each other. We can look at a picture and say it's Steve Jobs in a sombraro and a million computers couldn't figure that out in years of facial recognition and object comparison. And yet it'd take a room full of humans with pencils and paper to figure out certain math operations that computers can do in under a second. Computers are linear and human brains and dynamic and relational. Computers can't do hardly anything open ended and we can't do linear stuff very well. And yes you can write code for relational database access but it doesn't come close and the IO time on any storage media can't come close to a human brain.

Let me guess.... you're volunteering to confuse the "AI vs. Human intelligence" issue by becoming the first human to fail the Turing Test?

How about world abandonment?

[slew]

Why on earth would this advanced AI want to stay on little old earth?

Seems to me that any crazy smart AI would just beam themselves out into space to avoid us and maybe watch us from a distance occasionally for amusement.

Think of this way, when you see an anthill, it's rather curious for a while, then you get bored and go on your merry way. Unless of course you are a sociopath and want to destroy the ant hill and all the ants for fighting with other ants, or you are insane and you want to teach the ants to get along with other ants or spiders their mortal enemy or perhaps you are psychotic and want to train the ants to do your bidding. More likely you would just leave and go on to something more interesting (unless you are not that intelligent to begin with).

I fail to understand why people seem to insist that any really smart AI would want to have anything to do with us except on an occasional basis. Humans and earth aren't really that important in the bigger scheme of things (just important to us humans of course) and we'd probably not have much in common with any really advanced AI anyhow.

If humans would ever create such an AI, it would be like a bunch of ordinary joes giving birth to a super einstien. Eventually, the 'kid' would stop listening to us, go do their own thing which we would be too dumb to understand or appreciate and occasionally we'd invite it to visit to help us fix the settings on our computer because we got it messed up. It would explain to us in excruciating detail how we were using the wrong type of computer and how we needed to get up to date on technology and we'd just tell them a story about how it was in the old days, it would roll it's virtual eyes and say thanks for the tip, and go back to it's own business of which we would be blissfully ignorant...

Just think about it for a second.

Re:Oblig.

[flyingsquid]

I'll go Ray one better. We will have this before 2029.

Yes, but what do they mean by "human level intelligence", in particular, which human are we talking about? I mean, if "human level intelligence" means "as smart as George W. Bush", then I wouldn't trust that machine to handle my taxes, let alone any really critical tasks.

Re:Oblig.

[Anonymous Coward]

We already know that it's possible to contain 100% of real-time human brain functions in a casing 10cm by 10cm by 10cm and weighing under five pounds.

Do you have a source on this by any chance? I'd be interested in reading how we realized that this is possible.

Re:Oblig.

[drinkypoo]

On the other hand, making a machine with human intelligence is (literally) as easy as making a baby

You need to be made to understand that we don't really "make" babies. All we really do is supply the raw materials to our prebuilt baby-making equipment and let them do the work. While we can currently observe pretty much the entire process (and observing the first part of the process is in fact one of the major drivers of the internet) we still can't mimic it. Get back to me when we can make a baby without using sperm, ovum, or womb.